


Light Reading

by destinies



Series: Timeless [2]
Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Library Sex, They are married, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:49:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27421489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinies/pseuds/destinies
Summary: Ravka's rulers have a unique way of resolving their differences.
Relationships: The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova/Alina Starkov
Series: Timeless [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2003410
Comments: 26
Kudos: 262





	Light Reading

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as a smut prompt fill for Tumblr: “I love the way you look with my fingers inside you.” It's set after my longfic, [Out of Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26234110), but should stand alone just fine.
> 
> Thanks to [Luna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkofthemoon) for eviscerating my adverbs without mercy—you make all my stories better.

For as long as I could remember my marriage, there’d been a fundamental conflict at the heart of it: I wanted to be the person who steered clear of her husband when she was angry with him but could never seem to keep away.

The Saints knew that there was more than enough palace for both of us. We weren’t burdened—or blessed—with the large extended family that plagued most royal lines; it was just us, and our cadre of servants, rattling around in the residence of a family line he’d almost managed to extinguish. That he hadn’t, I knew, was a constant source of frustration. Just like I was.

That particular night we’d had an argument over taxes, maybe, or, about his plans to deal with the small hotspots of revolt popping up across Ravka. Our arguments blurred together after a while. All I remembered is that he invited me to dinner, and I took a rare chance and declined. Instead, I went to the palace library.

I wasn’t exactly what you’d call a scholar, so I couldn’t wrap my head around the many treatises on leadership that took up a not insignificant portion of the shelves, but I liked the library because it was peaceful. The servants rarely came in here, so I could linger as long as I wanted without being disturbed. I even liked the old musty smell; it reminded me of the upstairs rooms of Keramzin, where Mal and I had played as children. I’d also visited the library in the early days of my marriage, so I was told, but I hadn’t taken exceptionally good care of it then. Once I realized how much some of the Lantsovs’ books had mouldered, I had an archivist from Os Kervo come to undo some of the damage.

Now the library was cleaned regularly, and all the shelves were dusted—even behind the books—so I could run my hands over the spines and not worry about cobwebs clinging to my skin. I was doing just that, idly winding my way through the row of poetry books—their lyrical beauty was lost on me, but I liked looking at the titles. A beautiful copy of the _First and Second Epics of Kregi_ had just captured my interest when I heard a voice say from behind me, “I thought I would find you here.”

I closed my eyes, sighed, and turned to face my husband. My normal technique whenever he was annoying me was to leave without acknowledging him, but I felt like standing my ground. “There are only so many rooms in the palace.”

“There are hundreds of rooms in the palace.”

“And here I thought I’d found the one you wouldn’t enter,” I said on a sigh. His study was crammed full of books; he didn’t have a reason to come down here. “I’ll have to try again tomorrow.”

I grabbed a random book and made as if to shoulder past him, hugging it to my chest for protection. But the row was narrow and he put out a hand to stop me, resting it on the book. “Why the hurry, Alina?”

“Nighttime reading.”

“Yes, everyone who knows you knows of your longstanding interest in… Shu poetry.”

“I’m branching out,” I said, jerking away from him. “A queen should have many interests.”

“What’s next?” he asked mildly, but I could hear some other emotion simmering underneath, and that was never good. “Will you learn to play an instrument?”

I shrugged. “Why not? Perhaps the flute.”

He arched an eyebrow. “The _flute_?”

That was a bad choice; he was getting ideas. I cursed myself. “Maybe the piano.”

“You don’t have a pianist’s hands,” he said, eyeing them judgmentally. “Too small, not nearly precise enough.”

“They seem to suit you just fine,” I snapped, my anger rising.

The corner of his mouth curved into the half-smile he gave me whenever I was amusing him, or being what he might call petulant. “They do, yes. When you put them to good use.”

I felt my face flush. We were still close enough that he could easily reach for me, and he did, grabbing my waist to pull me into him despite how my heels dug into the carpet. It was my final act of resistance, and a feeble one, because our dialogue had transformed my anger into something else, and I was already falling under his sway. The book thumped between our chests, the only thing guaranteeing safe distance, and, even though I was no longer sure I wanted him to leave, I let him see the scowl on my face plain as day. The library was well-lit. He had no excuse.

Of course, that scowl dissolved the second he leaned down to nibble my ear, and my power eagerly leapt to meet his lips. He was so much taller than me that the book between us was barely a deterrent. For him, anyway—one hard corner dug into my breast.

“Aleksander,” I said through gritted teeth, then around a gasp as his tongue traced the shell of my ear, “this is _not_ comfortable.”

He reached between us and tossed the book away. It landed on the floor with a thud.

“That works,” I admitted, and I took advantage of the pause to kiss him first.

I had to get that in, that small victory. Otherwise I would already be swept up in the tide of his desire. I knew what would happen when I stayed to banter with him. I knew that I wanted what he wanted, that all my denial was superficial. I craved him as much as he did me. We’d been through all of this before, one of us angry, the other wanting—and yes, sometimes he was the one who was angry. It never lasted. We’d always melt.

So I knew what would happen next. He would get a hand up my nightgown, and then into my underwear, and then, and then, and then. My anger would dissolve around his mouth or his fingers or his cock. I was not powerless—never powerless, not anymore—but he was so difficult to resist, and so hard to stay mad at when he was inside me.

He was being tricky tonight. Normally he would use his fingers for a while, and then switch, or ask me to repay him in kind. But tonight he kept me pressed up against the library shelf, his fingers tracing their line back and forth, over whatever it was he found inside of me that made my toes curl. I tried my best to keep kissing him, but I lost my place, and he turned his attention from my mouth to my sensitive neck.

“A—Aleksander?” I asked, while I could still form a coherent thought.

“Mm?” he replied, pressing his lips to a point he’d definitely been sucking a mark into just a second ago.

“There has to be a better way to—I just don’t think this is a productive way to h-handle—” He had long fingers, and he stopped paying attention to that one spot and used them to press farther in, like he could reach the core of me. He certainly reached _some_ thing. My eyes rolled to the ceiling. “Oh, _Saints_.”

Aleksander hummed against my ear, then said breathlessly, “I love the way you look with my fingers inside you, Alina. I never tire of it.”

“Fuck.” I rocked against his hand, clung to his neck. “Don’t stop, don’t.”

He didn’t. His mouth kept moving, against my ear, the underside of my jaw, and his fingers moved too, a steady rhythm for me to move with. I fisted my hands in the fabric of his _kefta_ just to stay upright, and when I finally peaked my knees buckled and I fell against him.

He lowered me very, very gently to the carpeted floor, kissing my mouth, still lightly circling his fingers between my legs, causing tiny aftershocks like the last sparks jumping from an extinguished fire. I groaned, closing my eyes, and when I wanted to stop I didn’t have to tell him. He just brought his fingers up to my lips so I could suck them clean.

“I’m still mad at you,” I told him, although it was ridiculous and hard to believe when my legs were shaking and I could taste myself on my tongue.

“I know,” he said.

It didn’t matter that much. He pushed me all the way onto my stomach and flipped my nightgown up over my waist. After adjusting his own clothes, he took me like that, and maybe if I was truly a saint, maybe if I could cling to my morals through the haze of a really good orgasm, I would have protested. Instead my fingernails scraped against the carpet as he thrust into me, and my cheeks burned as he drew out another moan. Well, at least I’d never buy into my own myth. The _Istorii Sankt’ya_ didn’t have a lot to say about saints getting fucked facedown on a library floor.

I didn’t think I could manage to come again so quickly. Sometimes I could, if he was strategic about it, like if he used his tongue to coax a climax out of me from the outside and then later, around his cock. But he had worked me over so thoroughly with his fingers that I only felt overwhelmed, although not in a bad way. While he fucked me I stayed floating in that sort of warm, hazy post-orgasm space, listening to the sounds he made. I’m sure he wanted to believe he could remain composed, but I heard the grunts, the soft moans—sometimes of my name. I cherished every small victory.

He moved so well, his ministrations ensured that I was more than wet enough, and he had already been hard when he brought me to the floor. One of his hands was bunched up in the collar of my nightdress as he kept up his rhythm, hard and fast. I’m sure to him every stroke was a victory, too. We counted our points differently.

Sometimes we could go for hours—another way we weren’t like normal people, even other Grisha—but tonight he came fast, gripping my hip so hard I knew it’d bruise in the morning. Then he pulled out and fell onto his back beside me, and I let a sigh shudder through me, the culmination of everything, and turned to look at him.

“What were we fighting about?” I asked breathlessly. “Do you remember?”

He looked at me from beneath his lashes, black as sin, eyes as grey as smoke, promising further fires. “No,” he said.

“Liar.” I rolled over onto my back. “I’ll remember eventually, and then you’ll be sorry.”

He reached out to touch my face and stroked a thumb across my lower lip. “How sorry, Alina?”

“ _Really_ sorry.” I nipped at the tip of his thumb, and he drew it back. Smiling slightly, I looked up at the ceiling, watching him out of the corner of my eye. “Aleksander?”

“Yes?”

“I think maybe I could acquire a taste for poetry.”

That smirk flitted across his lips again. “If we keep this up, maybe I could, too.”


End file.
